Religious News and Notes.
By Editor
—There are over 260 city missionaries in New York, who make about 800,000 visits a year. —The trial of Talmage commenced on the 24th ult. Much feeling is arising in the denomination. —Nearly all the walking matches in New York were stopped by the police, on Sunday, March 23. —There are over one hundred Chinamen in Boston, fifty-two of whom are enrolled in a missionary school. —In 7,000 church-yards in England a dissenting parishioner cannot be buried by his own minister. —There were about 300 Jews in Jerusalem at the beginning of this century; now about 13,000. A rich Jew of Venice has established a school of agriculture. —Rev. Dr. Shaw of Rochester, N. Y., a staunch Presbyterian, says women shall pray at his prayer meetings, and he should like to see anybody try to stop them. —The Christian at Work speaks of “the machineried-to-death Sunday school.” The Presbyterian Weekly says, “A little less church machinery, and a little more oil of love,” will help the work of the church. —The public affairs of England, a Protestant Country, are directed by a Jew; in France, a Catholic Country, the most important offices are held by Protestants; and the Minister of Foreign Affairs in Turkey is a Christian. —It is now said that the St. Louis Baptist minister who invited the Unitarian to remain at communion, “is heartily sorry for it.” Those religious papers which so praised “Christian liberality” may now express their regrets. —Bishop Coxe says there is no more need of revising the Bible than of revising Shakspeare! But one is a translation—the other is not. And if Shakspeare was to occupy as important a position as the Bible does, we should petition for a very thorough revision. —The report of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, sometimes called Mr. Comstock’s Society, shows good results in the destruction of vile reading and in convicting the vile criminals who circulate it. The extent to which immoral reading is circulated in schools is alarming. —Dr. Bowles, Universalist, severely handled Dr. Kalloch, Baptist, last Sunday evening, for the following expression in the report of his lecture of March 9:—“It was a terrible truth that by no other possible means the Chinese could be got rid of, then the Chinese element in San Francisco would be wiped out in blood.” —A Chicago rector of the Reformed Episcopal Church has announced that hereafter the sermon will occupy but twenty minutes. That will do; but if he should lengthen the sermon and cut down the music to twenty minutes, he would be in danger of losing his congregation. Religious meetings may soon be classed as “amusements.” —Concerning the current excuses for Bishop Purcell, the Christian at Work says. It is perfect folly to call this affair simply “an embarrassment, the result of mistake of judgment.” Such language indicates that the archbishop and his brother were idiots or fools; but the Roman Catholic Church does not make prelates out of such material. —The Alliance publishes a note from “Robert Raikes, Junior,” who says he “can’t stand these Sunday-school lessons,” and asks the editor to “fire a shot at the series.” The editor promises to “try to incite a rebellion against them,” if they are not improved. “Sunday-school literature,” as a whole, is about as trashy as can well be got up. —A letter from Lepere, French Minister of the Interior, reproving the Bishop of Grenoble for misrepresenting the Government and encouraging a disobedience of the laws, by a pastoral, wherein he declared that the Government is hostile to religion, and that laws are not sanctioned by the Church and therefore not binding, is attracting much attention, as the sternest and most determined communication recently addressed by the civil power to any prelate.